In today’s world, it is completely understandable why parents would want to make extra effort to protect their kids from harm. Overparenting (which is also called helicopter parenting) isn’t a good solution to that anxiety. A study found that parents who become too heavily involved in homework are possibly hindering their child’s development.
Science Daily pointed out a study from Queensland University of Technology (that was done in 2016). The study involved 866 parents from three Brisbane Catholic/independent schools. They found that those who endorse overparenting beliefs tend to take more responsibility for their child doing their homework and also expect their child’s teachers to take more responsibility for it.
Parents in the study completed online questionnaires about their parenting beliefs and intentions. They also provided information about their attitudes with their child’s homework.
While it is good to help your kid with homework, it is possible to take things way too far. Parents are overparenting when they continue to assist their child with homework at an age when the child should be taking most of the responsibility for their academic work.
Hovering over a first grader, and walking him or her though the process of doing homework is fine. But, parents shouldn’t still be doing that with their highschooler. The goal should be to gradually allow the child to take over more and more responsibility for their homework and studying.
Overparenting, and micromanaging a child’s’ homework, robs the child of the opportunity to learn how to get that done on their own. They won’t learn how to push through a boring task, how to focus on studying for a test, or how to break up a big assignment into smaller parts. All of these skills will be incredibly important to have when the child grows up and goes to college.
Another problem with overparenting and homework arises when the parents harass their child’s teachers in an effort to get their child a better grade. This often happens when the parent sees themselves, and their child, as one entity.
One way to stop overparenting is for the parent to actively make an effort to step back and allow their child to experience failure. Mistakes can teach us plenty of things that cannot be learned by proxy.
Related Articles at Families.com:
* Don’t Do Your Child’s Homework for Them
* Helicopter Parent or Scaredy Cat?
* Some Parents are Following their Teens to College